


darkness (oh it burns so bright)

by CheerUpLovely



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 06:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17637353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: Felicity worries that it’s because of the shooting. She worries that while her implant has phenomenally healed her spinal cord that there may have been damage elsewhere that prevents her from carrying his child.The idea that she blames herself is incomprehensible to him.They keep trying. For months. For a year. Then they speak to a doctor. They have some tests. And then they are right here, in front of the doctor who has looked so deeply into his body and found nothing but scar tissue and pain where healthy man should stand before him.





	darkness (oh it burns so bright)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this since January 2016. No kidding, that's the state of my writing backlog right now but could it be I'm finally writing? Apparently so, at least for tonight!  
> Originally it was prompted anonymously on tumblr that Oliver discovers his torture has left him unable to concieve, and I wanted to explore that a little more. This was during season 4, so obviously things have changed and is a little different from the canon storyline. They're married, they're happy, and they're wanting more, but William isn't in this fic (as much as I love him).

(gif credit: http://thearrowgifs.tumblr.com/post/117932722491)

 

 

 

It hits him like a sledgehammer to the face.

The doctor spoke, pausing every so often to allow him to digest the words he was being told, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t fully understand what he’s being told, but the world falls out from beneath him a little more every time another anomaly is added to the list he’s presented with.

He goes to grip the assuring hand in his but there’s nothing but air, no comforting hand on his thigh and no confident hand on his back assuring him they can conquer the world. She’s not there. He’s alone.

He doesn’t want to be.

The doctors have presented him with copies of scans that look like they belong to a body not his own, images of scars far fresher than what they have faded into, sheets of test results that make no sense to him. They’re telling him things he doesn’t want to remember about the trauma he endured during the years following the Gambit’s sinking, reminding him of the tortures and abuses his body has suffered so undeservingly, and he doesn’t want to be told these things; it isn’t what they’re there for.

Except what they’re there for has led them to this moment right now, to when a doctor presents him with evidence that his body isn’t just struggling, it’s ruined. He isn’t having trouble, his body should have failed him far sooner in life.

“Mr. Queen, do you understand what we’re telling you.”

_You’re telling me we’ll never have children of our own._

“I’d like my wife to be here for this, please.”

\---

It starts with a negative pregnancy test. It’s a scare after the time they weren’t as careful as they usually are when they’d had a little more to drink than planned after John’s birthday dinner, but it makes them realize that they want this. They’ve been married for two blissful years - and blissful is putting it lightly - and now they’re ready to start a family of their own.

After the scare, they try. It doesn’t work.

Nothing happens.

At all.

Their doctor tells them her late period the first time around was likely due to a particularly stressful time at work. After that one-off, there’s no late periods, no suspected pregnancy symptoms, nothing at all.

Felicity worries that it’s because of the shooting. She worries that while her implant has phenomenally healed her spinal cord that there may have been damage elsewhere that prevents her from carrying his child.

The idea that she blames herself is incomprehensible to him.

They keep trying. For months. For a year. Then they speak to a doctor. They have some tests. And then they are right here, in front of the doctor who has looked so deeply into his body and found nothing but scar tissue and pain where healthy man should stand before him.

\---

He can never give her what they so desperately want.

They ask him what specific tortures he endured, beyond what he’s declared so far but there are some things about his past and things that have been done to him that he still wouldn’t even consider telling his wife. It’s a history he doesn’t need to travel down and it won’t better their lives for talking about it. It’s part of his past.

But it’s not, is it? Their doctor is struggling to understand how he even manages to maintain a healthy and functional sex life with his wife, given the torture he’s already allowed to be noted down in his medical notes, and he doesn’t know what to say to that.

He can’t have a baby with his wife, and there’s nothing that can be said to make that okay.

\---

Felicity asks him how he’s handling things.

She doesn’t ask if he’s okay, and he loves her more for it. He’s not okay. His body is an abandoned fairground of bad memories and scars and now they’re pushing his dreams of a family life further out of reach, reminding him that he can never have these things because he doesn’t deserve them.

After the doctor explained everything again with Felicity at his side, she was silent for a long time. Too long, like she was confused. Neither of them expected this, he knows, but she never thought for a second that there might be any chance he was the complication in their pregnancy plans. She had held his hand tightly in her own as she gave him a firm nod, a silent affirmation that ‘this is our life now’, and she had asked the doctor if there was anything they should be doing for his health that they weren’t already doing, and they were sent home with pamphlets and offers of counseling.

As if they were grieving.

Maybe they are.

He wonders as they travel home in silence whether she’ll consider leaving him. They have a happy marriage, they’ve never really left the honeymoon period much to the eye-rolls of their friends, but this is a firm grasp of reality that they rarely feel any more. He wonders if she’s tempted to leave, if her will to be a mother is stronger than her will to be his wife, and he realizes far too quickly that he would let her. He’d let her go to pursue her dreams of being a mother because he can no longer give her that.

Later he’ll think of the specifics, he’ll think of never feeling the gentle swell of her stomach and the kick of their child beneath his palm. He’ll think of never feeling those tiny newborn fingers wrap around his and how he’ll never pace the halls with his crying child.

But he’s crying himself, though he doesn’t realize it until Felicity sits and takes his face in her hands in the peace of their living room.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells her as she swipes her thumb beneath his eyelid and wipes away his tears. “I’ll never be able to...there’s not even a chance…”

“I don’t care about that, Oliver,” she tells him softly.

“But we want it,” he argues weakly.

They’ve laid awake for endless nights thinking about how they’re going to turn their guest room into a nursery, and there’s even a little pair of baby socks hidden in a drawer that they once kept out for good luck and now they’re hidden away and won’t ever be worn by the baby they’re not going to have. They want to be parents. They want to start worrying about school districts and whether their kid is eating enough vegetables and how long should they keep a pacifier for and are they learning to walk fast enough, shouldn’t they be talking by now, and does any of this even matter anymore?

They want this. Want. Wanted?

“All I want is for you to be okay.”

\---

He ignores it at first, carries on as if life hasn’t dealt them another bad hand and that everything is normal. The first night, while she was getting ready for bed, he’d given her an out. He said she could leave if she wanted. She told him never to say those words again and got into bed without another word. For days, weeks even, they keep this silent loss to themselves.

Felicity carries on working. She hides the ovulation tests that were being kept under the bathroom sink because he doesn’t see them the next time’s digging around for a new razor and he doesn’t ask if she threw them away. She goes about her day, and so does he, he supposes. He still gets home thirty minutes before she does, and showers before he starts cooking dinner and she still walks in the door and tells him it smells delicious no matter what he’s preparing.

He tears up those pamphlets. He doesn’t return the doctor's reminder call about talking to a counselor. He doesn’t do anything because he doesn’t need to. Everything is fine. His marriage is fine. His health is fine. He’s fine.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

It dawns on him when she asks him that he’s been quiet for an awfully long time. They’ve cleared away dinner and they’re reading in bed for an early night but he hasn’t turned a page in however long they’ve been up here, which is quite a while considering she’s leaning to plug in her Kindle while she asks him that.

He waits for her to settle back against his side before he answers her, mulling over his words while he places his unread book aside without care for making his page as he usually does (with a strip of photo booth snaps from their first road trip out of Star City, not by folding the page corner, he’s not entirely hopeless) and his arm falls around her instinctively.

“There are all these memories that I was looking forward to us having,” he starts, watching blindly ahead to where the blanket shifts from her feet moving against his calf muscle. It’s oddly soothing, considering how cold her bare feet are. “And just like that, they’re all gone.”

It’s the first time he’s really talked about it since that first day. He hasn’t had the words, or he’s had too many that don’t make sense, but now he can form them into sentences that still bite, but don’t leave behind scars in their wake. It’s becoming another loss on a long list of losses that includes his mother, his father, and parts of his life that he’ll never get back.

But he’s confident now that his wife won’t be lost to him. He knows from the way she sits up a little more but keeps her body tight to his that this is their journey, as it has been from the beginning.

“Not necessarily.”

Those words take him by surprise, and this time it’s Felicity looking like she’s been struggling with her words.

“We can still have those memories, just not in the way we planned.”

He’s thinking about that list of options on the back of the first pamphlet he tore up, the list of ‘alternatives’ that he felt should have been titled ‘replacements’.

“You’ve got so much love in you, Oliver, we can’t waste that.”

\---

After a sleepless night on his part, they have a long discussion about their ‘alternatives’ (they’re not replacements, they’ll never be second best or anything less, they’ve decided, it’s simply the path they’ve had to take).

She won’t consider a donor, and IVF isn’t possible with himself as the natural father so that idea quickly gets removed from the table. Surrogacy quickly follows along with it, because there’s nothing wrong with her womb anyway, so there was no reason to consider using someone else’s.

Adoption they talk about for a long time.

They’ve always been drawn towards saving their city, and there are so many children in Star City who need to be loved.

Saving the city might need to get a little closer to home this time.

\---

Matthew is five years old when they meet him.

It’s been weeks of talking with various channels of applications, and even more weeks of counseling to ensure they’re wanting to adopt for the right reasons and that they have a suitable home to offer a child and Oliver’s so terrified at first that parts of his past are going to work against them, but they pass all the requirements. John’s recommendation letter is a big winning factor in their corner, and Oliver swears he didn’t tear up when he read it although Felicity sobbed so hard at their friend’s words that she could hardly thank him for what he’d helped them achieve.

The children’s home in Star City is far busier than it should be, but it was Slade’s devastation on the city and years of attempted ambush attacks that have caused so much death that he never stopped to think about what happened to the children who lost everything. The city houses far too many children, and the drive for adoption hasn’t been as high as it should be, but he tries not to blame himself when he looks around the children who are waiting to be taken home and loved.

Matthew isn’t playing with the other kids. He’s quiet, keeping himself to himself and Oliver feels drawn to him as he sits down and starts talking with him.

Matthew has scars too. He’s a little boy who feels lost and Oliver has felt lost for so long. He’s lucky to have Felicity at his side to help repair that, and he knows that’s part of they want to open their home to a child in need; they found themselves in each other, and maybe they can help a child find themselves too.

So he tells Matthew about Felicity. He tells him how Felicity loved him and helped him become a better person, how she fixed him and stopped his nightmares.

“It's not easy, but if you can be brave, it gets better.”

The words don’t feel like a lie when he tells them, and when Matthew looks at him they feel like the most important words he’s ever said to a child.

“I think you’re very brave if you’ve come this far on your own.”

\---

A week later they’re back at the children’s home again and Matthew finds them once again; this time on purpose. They’ve come here for a quieter meeting with him to see if they’re still interested and Oliver knows from the nervous excitement he feels when they leave the house that morning that they’re definitely still interested. Somehow every conversation they have seems to come back to this unique little boy that just feels right.

Another week and they’re back again.

And again.

And again.

And they file the paperwork.

\---

“My daddy left me,” Matthew tells them.

They know this from his case worker. They know now that Matthew’s father abandoned him in the children’s home after an accidental fire took his mother and scarred his son permanently, surrendering him to the state rather than choosing to care for the boy himself.

Felicity tells him how her father left her too.

Matthew tells him about how his last foster family didn’t want him because he wasn’t normal. They know that he experienced bullying from his foster siblings in his last placement because of the scarring on his torso and right arm, and that they took him back to the children’s home because it was so obviously not the good family placement they had hoped for the boy, but they understood how that must have seemed to a small child.

“Maybe if I pretend to be normal they would want me.”

“You don’t have to pretend to be anything other than what you are,” Oliver tells him. “All you have to decide is whether or not you’d like to come and stay with us for a weekend, and see if you can find a new home that you fit into just the way you are.”

\---

The first weekend goes so well.

Matthew fits into the new home as if he were always a part of it, and their next step is to a week-long residential visit and a trip from his caseworker afterward to discuss Matthew’s potential future with them.

He’s a kind boy. He’s a sweet boy. He’s polite and happy and excited about every part of life and learning that it breaks their hearts that he was overlooked for so long. They don’t dwell on that though, more focus on the possibility that this little boy is the perfect fit for their family, and that maybe the timing was meant to be because they were meant to be together all along.

His sandy blonde hair means he blends in with them both, and his green eyes hold a similar twinkle to Felicity’s. He’s happy, healthy and he loves spending time with them.

Until the storm hits.

\---

Midway through their week visit, a thunderstorm hits Star City.

They have a good routine now with Oliver’s reaction to thunder and lighting, and while she’s stroking his hair and holding him tight enough to push back his dark thoughts and racing panic he’s suddenly aware of a noise that he hasn’t heard before, a noise that he _hates_ instantly and suddenly Felicity’s not at his side anymore and the fragile walls that her comfort puts between him and the storm burn to the ground.

But then she’s back. And she’s just as panicked.

“Oliver, he won’t talk to me. It’s the storm, he’s scared-”

Matthew’s scared.

He’s on his feet without thought, his own storm silenced in the need to get to this boy who needs him, this boy who’s scared and this boy that he’s responsible for protecting now. He doesn’t think of his own fears as he barrels down the hall and into the second bedroom where Matthew’s bolt upright in his bed surrounded by the blue bed sheets they bought especially when they knew he was coming back for a longer visit. He just picks the boy up and sits back down with him in his lap, surrounding him with his arms as he presses him against his chest.

Caged in completely from the storm by Oliver and blocked from the front by Felicity, he’s safe from the flashes and booms from outside the window. They talk him back to them, tell him how he’s okay, how storms pass and the lightning can’t get him here, and the thunder is just the sound of the storm getting further away, and when this pure little boy begs them not to leave him alone they hold him tighter and hate the fact that he’s scared because he’s had to be alone with this fear before.

 _Don’t leave me on my own_ , he begs them.

 _We’re never going to leave you_ , they repeat over and over.

 _We love you,_ they tell him.

And they mean it.

An hour passes and the storm fades away but this time Matthew’s asleep in the center of their bed, not his own. It’s not until he’s asleep in a haphazard ball arrangement with one leg dangerously close to kicking Oliver’s thigh and Felicity’s arm secured around his back that Felicity asks Oliver if he’s okay.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never left you during a storm before, but-”

“He needed us more,” Oliver finishes for her. She doesn’t have to apologize for that. It was the right thing to do.

He looks at the peace on Matthew’s face and wonders if this is what Felicity sees in him when his storms pass.

“I didn’t even think about it. All that mattered was him,” he tells her. “I’ve only ever felt that pull before with you.”

“I think that’s called parenting,” she tells him.

\---

Their week visit with Matthew draws to a close alongside Sara Diggle’s birthday party. Now that the storm has cleared, it’s perfect weather for a garden party and they offer up their back yard for John and Lyla’s daughters fourth birthday party. With only minimal age gap between them, it’s lovely to see Matthew and Sara playing together as if they were friends their whole loves, and when Oliver watches from the barbecue as Matthew squeezes himself into the same lawn recliner as Felicity, he knows.

“He’s the one,” Oliver tells John when he asks how their week has been so far. “We’re going to arrange the last of the paperwork when the social worker comes tomorrow.”

It’s been obvious a few times this week and they’ve just silently agreed that Matthew is the right fit for them, especially after the storm. He completes them in ways they never imagined having a child would, especially once they had to let go of the idea of having a child naturally.

\--

“Can I help, Dad?” Matthew asks when he sees Oliver putting another round of burgers on the grill. “I wanna learn how.”

Dad. The word slips out of his mouth so easily that Oliver’s not entirely sure that he realizes he’s said it. John says nothing and turns around to join Lyla in preparing Sara’s birthday cake to give them a moment together.

But Oliver says nothing, hoists this skinny little boy onto his hip and wonders if the four burgers he’s eaten are a sign of a growth spurt to come, and he teaches his son to flip his first burger on the grill.

“There you go, one burger ready,” he praises when it smells like perfection and he’s certain it’s cooked all the way through. Testing to see if the former name slip was intentional, he places the burger in a bun, adds the cheese he knows will be welcome and slips Matthew down off his hip while he gets a plate. “Burger for Mom?” he asks as he hands the plate to him.

Matthew takes it eagerly, carrying it swiftly across the lawn while calling out “Mom!” and Oliver watches in pure delight as Felicity’s drink goes flying out of her hand with shock.

\---

“Was it everything you imagined?” Felicity asks when Matthew’s exhausted from a whole afternoon of games in the back yard and possibly too many slices of birthday cake and passed out in his bed. “Being called Dad for the first time?”

“It was so much more,” Oliver smiles as he dresses for bed and watches her taking off her make up in front of the vanity. “What about you, being called mom?”

She smiles at him in the mirror, the mother of his child.

“The most perfect thing.”

\---

“Does this mean I’m staying?” Matthew asks when a week later he’s still at their house after a short meeting with his social worker days before which left them more elated than they’d been since their wedding day.

“Am I a Queen now?” he asks, when they show him paperwork that apparently means he’s never going back to the children’s home again and it has his new name on, but he’s still not great at reading (even though he recognizes his first name).

“Well, you’re officially Matthew Queen,” Oliver tells him as he pours his favorite cereal without inwardly cringing at the sugar content because his son can have whatever he wants right now, and saying those words would never get old. Matthew Queen. His son. “But in reality, you’re a Smoak. We both are,” he winks.

Felicity peers up from her morning coffee with a cursory glance at her both, but she does raise a smile at Matthew when he giggles at her.

“Mom’s the boss of us,” he declares.

Oliver watches as they share a look and wonders how a little over a year ago their world seemed shattered, and he was wondering whether they would ever recover. Now, they’re sitting down to breakfast with their son, and later this afternoon they’re going to look at the local primary to see if he can start there straight away or if he has to wait until the new term, and later he’s definitely going to play catch with his son in the back yard.

When his world shattered, Felicity held his hand and told him all she wanted was for him to be okay.

A year later, they hold their son's hands as he jumps in puddles and wonder how they ever doubted that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you liked it!
> 
> You can find me on twitter at @ghostfoxlovely


End file.
